I can’t feel my toes…

I don’t hate living in Wisconsin. I don’t. But I do hate the cold with a violent fervor. That’s right, I used the word “fervor” – I’m bringing it back.

People like to ask me how cold it is here a lot, but it doesn’t really matter much because cold is cold. Once it gets below freezing the varying degrees of cold become inconsequential. I realize it’s all relative because I just implied that I don’t think temperatures above freezing are AS cold – and those of you who exist in warm temperatures just gasped audibly. If you throw on a sweater because it’s only 58 degrees outside, then I’m probably talking about you.

I haven’t felt my toes since August. That’s pretty normal.

Due to the “Blizzaster” in regions of the southern US that don’t normally get snow, I’ve had more than a few people ask me things like “How do you put up with this?” or “How do you go out in this everyday?” And my answer is: Probably the same way that you do, pulling my coat tight around me and mumbling profanities under my breath. And who says I go out in it anyway? Most days I go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that I go from the comfort of my heated home to the comfort of my heated car as quickly as possible. Sure, there are people in Wisconsin who go snowmobiling and skiing, people who snowshoe and hunt. I am not one of those people.

As I said, I don’t hate living in Wisconsin, but I wouldn’t complain if the Earth were to suddenly shift on its axis and our climate started resembling that of Southern California. (The coastal parts, not the sweltering hot parts.) I love raising my kid here, where I grew up. I’m very fortunate that we were able to move back here so that he can grow up around family doing a lot of the same things that I did as a kid.

He’s impervious to the cold – and not just because of his snowpants. I could go grab him off the couch right now and throw him out into a snowbank and he’d just scoff and start making snow angels.

I was like that once. Before I was rendered a total wussy by my ability to drive a car and my subsequent control over my own thermostat. (That’s right, mom – it’s 72 degrees in here right now! And my last name isn’t Rockefeller!)

I checked the forecast on my phone earlier today and saw that they’re predicting temperatures in the mid-30s this weekend. Mother Nature grants us these little reprieves regularly throughout the winter, something I am extremely grateful for. I imagine it’s so that people like me can actually go out and pick up a few groceries before we starve to death. It’s hardly a heat wave, but I’ll take what I can get.

I have a particularly shifty Cardinal that frequents the bird feeder outside my office window, but since he knows I want a photograph he usually scampers over to the opposite side of the feeder in the amount of time it takes me to (slowly) grab my camera and raise it up to bird level.

I was talking about him one day to Christine and she said “So are these the birds that are too stupid to fly south for the winter?” and I had to laugh.

Because I’m one of those birds.